Windmill & Tractor Mug Rug

When I was planning a post for this month, I realized I’ve never shared this little mug rug I made quite a while ago.

If you’ve never heard of a mug rug before, it simply is a little mini quilt, smaller than a placemat, but bigger than a coaster. It’s just the perfect size for a cup of coffee (or tea) to rest on with some extra space for a cookie. These quilted mug rugs make wonderful little gifts. Take a look here at some Christmas mug rugs I made last year.
 
For this specific mug rug I appliqued a design onto the one side of the mug rug. I added a pieced strip on the right side, quilted the little quilt and added binding.
 
For the applique (picture) part, I first drew the design on paper. As I’m no great artist, this always takes me a bit of time.

Once I was happy with the design, I used Heat ’n Bond Lite to adhere the separate pieces of the design to the background fabric. Some people complain about this product gumming up the sewing machine’s needle, however I did not have that problem. 

Once all the pieces were in place, I machine stitched a blanket stitch around all the edges. I also machine “embroidered” the structure and ladder below the vanes of the windmill. Then I added the side pieces which include a couple rectangles of corduroy to give it some extra texture.

After I’ve layered the mini-quilt, I outline quilted the applique and added some straight stitching on the side panel.

Lastly I added the binding. As you can see this is another great scrap buster plus you can really be creative and add any design you want - like this cute bird/heart design.